There’s an element that always misses from these assessments for some reason. Fishing. Mass fishing is one of the greatest destructions to the environment. And the oceans account for around 72% of the world’s oxigen production and nothing on land or everything on it combined achieves as much carbon capture as the oceans do.
And we’re destroying them at a faster rate than we are doing to anything on land.
I would suggest that instead of getting too bogged down in statistical data which will always have a lot of distorted information through how averages are obtained, people should learn how energy is exchanged through the trophic levels. Learn how biomagnification inflates every issue, from accumulation of toxins and chemicals, to energy loss and waste. The larger the animal, the larger the inefficiency as a redundancy, if I may. This logic can also be applied to Flora, not just Fauna. Ideally we should generate most of our sustenance through the lowest trophic level possible. The microbial and bacterial one. That would be where Precision Fermentation can play a great part in our futures.
But starting with understanding how predation systems were formed in Fauna is a great way to understand the trophic balance. It didn’t start by having carnivores first, did it? What would they consume? Flora? The fact is that having ambulant organisms which could evade many circumstances and weather events allowed them to reproduce beyond what the local Flora could allow them to consume, which resulted in them having to start preying on each other as result of induced scarcity.
Lack of self-regulation is the overarching flaw in the design. Once Fauna emerged, the rate of extinctions of both Flora and subsequently Fauna accelerated drastically, and so did changes in climate, obviously.
This is why I agree with the people who criticise Darwin for the use of the word “Evolution” as a descriptor in his thesis. It suggests “betterment” or “improvement”. Which from the insurgency of Fauna alone, we can attest that the world did not improve from it. Regarding sustainability alone, quite the contrary. “Transformation” is more accurate to describe what is always occurring. Mutations and subsequent adaptations transform the world. As if that constitutes Evolution… well… a problem can also evolve, I suppose.
Entropy, I guess…
Chaos is the architect of the scavenger’s rule of the wild.
There’s no hierarchies in Nature. The trophic levels merely refer to energy source in the chain - well, a tridimensional Web would be a more accurate visual discription than a chain.
But it would also make the microscopic forms of life the most valuable, if one wanted to place value to establish hierarchy. Which would be a silly endeavour to begin with. But a less silly one than a top as figment with a lion standing there. There is no top. Everything stems from the center and returns to it eventually.
But we as a species are nothing but a continuation of that fundamental flaw. We can’t achieve self-regulation, and ultimately we will cause resource collapse, which will cause scarcity, which will cause humans to prey on each other. This is our design. Or the inherent flaw in our design, like in all Fauna. One we’ve repeated incessantly through our brief recorded account we call history.
We just never did it at this rate and or everywhere all at once.
Now, how do we achieve self-regulation as a species? Theoretically it is possible, but in practice we can’t seem to get there.
We always get to the “tragedy of the commons”. Read up on this if you haven’t. It’s the feedback loop in our behaviour that makes us always race to the bottom basically.
As to your post, if you allow me to suggest, it would make more sense in one of the several environmental communities or even the solar punk ones across the lemmyverse.
Veganism as a word has lost all meaning by this point, but it is supposed to merely be a consideration for sentience when reduced to its’ most basic construction.
I don’t believe in the existence of consciousness. As it stands it merely seems to be meta-cognition, at least everytime someone tries to describe it. But cognition stems directly from sentience. Which stems from the sensorial experience. Which is verifiable. And why we can’t quite place it with the animals in the bivalve category. It’s too rudimentary beyond the management of those two valves.
But I’ll leave on this note, regarding sentience…
I have congenital anosmia, which means I’ve never smelled. If I were to try to think of a smell, it would be like trying to picture a colour I’ve never seen. Which led me to a thought experiment quite a while back in my life…
If a baby was born with nervous damage and never possessed any single one of the five senses, and if we kept this child alive… how could this baby have a single thought be formed? Out of what?
This is why I don’t believe in consciousness. We are nothing but an input-output system. And choice does exist somewhere in there. I just don’t call it “Free Will”. Too many things wrong with both of those words alone and even more when put together to describe what we’re trying to describe. The subatomic reality doesn’t suggest a predeterministic model. We, at our core, are as what reality seems to be, a randomising procedure. Another agent of chaos in the seemingly eternal entropy that is the universe. Let us just not call that free, when everything exists in condition to everything.
Anyway… when I write such long comments (which is too damn often!!), I never know how to finish. I always feel like apologising. So… sorry for the long one.
And if you read this far, I thank you for the attention you’ve given this fool.
This was a thoroughly researched paper.
But… is this supposed to be revelatory or just a contribution in assisting established confirmation? This isn’t meant as a rude or snobby question. I only read the paper, and not the embedded peer review link.
Because what I mean is that this is kind of common sense in Conservation discussions. The formation of clusters and parallel predation aid in achieving trophic balance. That is just common knowledge to me and the people in my circles of discussion. Nobody even thinks otherwise. It’s like biomagnification, it’s just part of the thought process in trophic exchange and balance.
The overarching and compelling discussion that emerged in Conservation was in the introduction of predators to amplify biodiversity or to correct population explosion of a specific species. The greater discussion in Conservation is not about if it works, because it does achieve both of those goals. It does achieve niche clustering. In magnitude. The greater discussion itself is in quality of life of the Fauna afterwards. Some people over the years have started to refer to this as “Wild Animal Rights”. Very often in acts of Conservation, the introduction of predators is a common practice, but it is now contested by fellow conservationists as an unethical proposition.
I know this is not the focus or the intention of the paper. So, we are (I am) sidestepping into a different abstract. But it is inevitable for me to ask as to what is the intention of this paper after being received. As I do agree with everything in the paper as a logical stance and as proof of it. My only rebuttal is in which direction are we to take this information afterwards?
Because biodiversity=good is not a clean cut affirmation that some like to claim. Even in Flora where is much easier to make that statement, one has to contend with invasive species as an undesired outcome of it. In Fauna, the quality of life has to be submitted as a factor in consideration in intervention.
Quick example: In the Yellowstone Park, the reintroduction of wolves, led to increase in biodiversity, and niche clustering was definitely found to occur. The case was considered on the surface as a success by many, as more species of everything including in the rivers was found after this (Human) intervention.
But… when investigating it closely, many of the species already there were found to have a decline in quality of life. Including the deer population which were now starving in fear of crossing the river and moving to places where they once fed, by the inflicted trauma of having witnessed the evisceration of some members of their population. Now they rather starve, just in fear of the same outcome. This is just one quick example in one place of many to be found if you desire to do so.
Geologists have confirmed that when Fauna emerged as a new form of life in our biosphere, species extinction of Flora and subsequently Fauna started to occur at a much faster rate and exponentially so. And mass extinctions coalesce with drastic climate change. Obviously.
All animals in Fauna, (including us, unfortunately), don’t possess self-regulation as a characteristic. This was what led to the initial predation systems in Fauna. Predators emerged from their owned induced scarcity, and parallel predation surged as a natural progression.
Even in a meta-zoology study, it was proven that carnivore animals are much more likely to develop cancer. And this can be easily established as another necessary feature in population control in larger predators. After all, if other animals cannot contain their numbers as they do to other species, another property has to emerge to prevent their own induced scarcity and even the extinction of other species in the process. Cancer is a good population control occurrence. Just like viruses are.
The problem with us as a species is that we are devising our own scarcity and driving species extinction because we resist all natural forms of population control. From predation, to cancer and even viruses and bacteria. And without possessing self-regulation, we are not only doomed to repeat what initiated predation in Fauna, but to commit it at a level that is unprecedented.
You can even see that human based conflicts also emerge from this. Without self-regulation as individuals and as a species, we devise resource collapse and start preying on each other as a result in scarcity becomes a source of conflict. From an athropological assessment this is a never ending loop in human behaviour. But it is just a feature in the design of all Fauna. If we ever develop a true capacity for self-regulation we would have for the first time proven to be special as many of us think we are. Which so far, we have not proven to be.
All societal issues lead back to this flaw in our design as members of Fauna. Survival instinct including procreation, plus pleasure seeking behaviours minus self-regulation equals the same outcome found in all Fauna. This simple equation of factors is our design. The same as in all other animals.
And we need to correct it, or face our role in the the inevitability of it in the entropy of biology in the biosphere.
Tangent aside, and going back to the paper, we need to have all this in mind when interpreting or using its’ information.
Especially when we deem ourselves as deserving “interventionists” meddling with what we have not mastered in ourselves.